Discursive social movement, political economy and institutional
approaches tend to dominate studies of large urban centres and, in
particular, efforts to assess the prospects for progressive public
policies in them. This article uses a revised version of Vincent
Lemieux's 1996 framework to compare Toronto and London, two cities
that underwent major governance transitions during the late 1990s, with
respect to their normative discourse, fiscal resource, institutional and
local leadership contexts. The discussion concludes that talk, money,
design and mayoral factors seemed less conducive to progressive policy
outcomes in early post-transition Toronto than London.

As concern grows over the multiple challenges facing large
international urban centres, so too do the number of thematic pivots in
the relevant research literature. At least three important analytic
lenses are employed in studies of major cities and, in particular,
assessments of the prospects for progressive public policies in them.
Although the three perspectives overlap considerably, they can be
roughly identified as the discursive social movement, political economy
and institutional approaches.

Scholars influenced by social movement and post-structural research
streams tend to emphasize the influence of talk, or discursive climate,
in creating the potential for progressive mobilization in cities. In
Caroline Andrew's words, effective action on such issues as public
transportation, women's safety and child care "depends on the
existence of a discourse that articulates this potential and justifies
municipal politics as a space for progressive citizens. Unless this
articulation exists, action is unlikely." (1) Andrew and others
thus understand progressive policy outcomes as requiring a rhetorical
space that promotes the coming together of urban citizens.

By way of contrast, researchers who adopt an urban political
economy view often focus on fiscal resources, specifically the
constrained revenue base of cities in Canada, Britain and elsewhere.
Many highlight a pattern of longstanding municipal dependence on fiscal
transfers from other levels, specifically central governments. Although
as Keil and Kipfer point out, political economy "is still
privileging the national over the urban question," (2) Canadian
finance studies show that "almost all provinces have been reducing
their transfers to local governments, although they are doing it in
different ways and at different speeds." (3) From a political
economy perspective, progressive urban policies are unlikely without
adequate financial resources either from municipal governments
themselves or through intergovernmental transfers.

Alongside discursive social movement and political economy analyses
are institutional studies that explore the design of urban governance.
The restructuring of metropolitan organization in many large Canadian
cities, including municipal amalgamations in Toronto and Montreal, has
drawn considerable attention from social scientists, as have efforts to
introduce a strategic governing authority in London, England. As Andrew
Sancton suggests, alterations to municipal governance systems can
re-define levels of institutional autonomy, including by determining
whether local versus central regimes gain or lose political control in
the restructuring process. (4) Studies that focus on the creation and
operation of urban political units tend to share a core assumption that
structures matter, whether to a city's social policies, the quality
of its citizens' public engagement, or the democratic fabric of
some larger political unit.

Obvious and important links exist among these themes of talk, money
and institutional design in an urban context and, indeed, many studies
look at all three dimensions. In Canada, for example, it is difficult to
imagine a resurgence of progressive discourse or activism vis-a-vis
cities that would be unrelated to demands for increased fiscal
resources, just as it is rare to find a discursive, social
movement-oriented account of progressive urban policies that ignores the
fiscal dimension. (5) Similarly, critical accounts of municipal
amalgamations in Toronto and Montreal frequently posit that these
institutional arrangements undermine local citizen engagement, and will
fail to produce the cost-saving advantages that their proponents
promised. (6)

Yet relatively few efforts have been made in the Canadian
literature to connect these themes at a theoretical level, and apply
them to the study of centre-local relations and the possibility of
progressive urban policies. One early step in this direction was taken
in Vincent Lemieux's 1996 article titled "L'analyse
politique de la decentralisation," which offered a comparative
framework for exploring institutional restructuring with reference to
its normative or discursive as well as fiscal dimensions. (7) For
Lemieux, the effects of centralization as well as decentralization can
best be understood in terms of the policy objectives of senior levels of
government. Once these goals are known, his account suggests, specific
propositions can be developed to predict progressive policy prospects in
city A versus B.

The following discussion reviews the main components of
Lemieux's argument, summarizes the empirical supports provided in
his 1996 account, and introduces the variable of local political
leadership as a critical intervening factor in the analysis of
intergovernmental relations. The article then compares two urban
governance transitions that took place since "L'analyse
politique de la decentralisation" was written, namely the
transformations that culminated in the creation of an amalgamated
municipal government in Toronto's inner city and inner suburbs in
1998, and a Greater London Authority (GLA) in London's inner and
outer boroughs in 2000. The interpretation of these developments that
emerges from a revised version of Lemieux's 1996 framework leads to
relatively pessimistic conclusions in terms of progressive policy
futures in early post-amalgamation Toronto in particular. (8)

A revised view of Lemieux's perspectives on talk, money and
institutional design can be summarized as follows: when public debate is
focused on the normative criterion of efficiency, reinforced by limited
fiscal resources and circumscribed institutional autonomy for relatively
compliant or discredited urban politicians--as arguably characterized
Toronto in the early megacity era--progressive policy outcomes are
unlikely to follow. By way of contrast, a discursive context in which
norms of local democracy and revitalization are emphasized, and where
municipal fiscal capacity and structural autonomy are contested by
credible urban leaders--arguably characteristic of the initial GLA
period--could be associated with greater possibilities for progressive
policy action.

The relatively weak public standing of Toronto's first
amalgamated municipal mayor, Mel Lastman, versus the considerably more
popular status of the Greater London Authority's first mayor, Ken
Livingstone, draw out a crucially important dimension of this contrast.
Although both mayors were colourful local populists, they clearly
differed in ideological terms, with Livingstone considerably more left
politically than Lastman. Moreover, if leadership capability can be
expected to compound discursive, fiscal and institutional factors, then
it would appear that after 1997, Toronto faced an especially ominous
scenario of weak conservative leadership, dominant right-wing discursive
values, constrained fiscal resources and limited structural
possibilities to respond to these challenges.

Lemieux's Thesis

Vincent Lemieux's study presents two core propositions that
relate directly to the role of talk, money and institutional design in
understanding urban public policy:

1. Some resources at stake in restructuring processes are more
important assets of power than others. The setting of normative
standards (for example, efficiency, accountability or equity) that
govern how shifts in governmental responsibility are evaluated remains a
crucial attribute of power, as does control over financial resources.

2. Criteria employed to evaluate restructuring processes are
generally not grounded in objective or scientific standards, but rather
in ideological and political preferences.

From these two starting points, Lemieux distills a useful set of
corollary statements to guide empirical observation.

Perhaps the most relevant corollaries to the present study concern
fundamental asymmetries between constitutionally supreme senior levels
of government, on one side, and subordinate local governments, on the
other. First, Lemieux argues, strong control by the former over the
setting and enforcement of normative standards governing the operations
of the latter will, by definition, constrain the autonomy of local
units. Second, senior levels of government that retain control over
normative standards can devolve responsibilities without providing the
fiscal capacity necessary to address those tasks. Third, in neo-liberal
times, senior levels of government frequently impose private sector
values and modus operandi upon junior levels; as a result, they elevate
efficiency norms to the status of unassailable assets that trump
competing participatory or equity values.

Two empirical cases examined in Lemieux's 1996 study were
drawn from Anglo-American systems. One involved efforts by the Reagan
administration to introduce "new federalism" arrangements,
under which greater power would be placed in the hands of sub-national
officials because they were ostensibly closer to the people than their
counterparts in Washington. Reagan's initiatives during the 1980s
promised to increase state and local government autonomy and, at the
same time, reduce reliance on what the president saw as inefficient
federal fiscal transfers to those jurisdictions. Lemieux suggests that
the Reagan approach was promising from a White House perspective because
it cut federal spending, downloaded policy responsibilities
(particularly in unpopular areas such as social welfare) and benefited
the Republican party base that rested for the most part outside major
cities. By way of contrast, progressive urban--and primarily
Democratic--interests were conveniently punished under this scheme.

A second and seemingly contradictory case involved Great Britain
during the Thatcher years. In this instance, a parallel emphasis on
reducing government expenditure led British Tories to centralize power
so that municipal governments in large cities with Labour party
majorities (including London) saw their taxation powers limited by the
imposition of "rate caps" and, in an ultimate coup de grace,
were shut down by the central government. Like Reagan, Thatcher defended
her decisions on the basis of efficiency and cost-cutting arguments;
unlike her close friend and ally in the United States, however, the
British prime minister concluded that only the central government could
be entrusted to meet those normative standards. From Thatcher's
perspective, centralization was useful because it helped to contain
wasteful public spending by out-of-control local politicians, eliminated
competing sources of authority (notably the Greater London Council or
GLC under the leadership of Ken Livingstone) and benefited Conservative
allies in suburban, small town and rural areas.

In short, Lemieux's account encourages researchers to probe
the policy implications of discursive, fiscal as well as institutional
changes. In his view, cross-national shifts in power
arrangements--especially as they concern relations between central and
urban governments--that appear to move authority in opposite directions
can in fact be quite similar, as was the case with devolutionary
processes in the hands of Ronald Reagan and highly centralizing efforts
to limit local government autonomy carried out by Margaret Thatcher. In
both instances, he suggests, progressive urban regimes controlled by
opposition interests ended up with limited autonomy and vastly reduced
financial resources, to the point that the GLC in 1986 possessed none of
either attribute once it was eliminated by central government fiat.

Unfortunately, Lemieux's account does not probe the specific
attributes of political leaders. The broad lines of his study, however,
suggest that the ability of municipal politicians to articulate and
defend competing normative standards to those of senior levels of
government would constitute a valuable political asset for local
regimes. Effective urban mayors, for example, who contest efficiency or
competitiveness norms or who challenge central government rhetoric about
the revitalization of local democracy would, following Lemieux's
formulation, have the capacity to advance and imprint alternative
discursive constructions in public debate. Once they made a competing
rhetoric of social justice, representation or local control sufficiently
robust, this line of argument suggests, urban mayors could challenge to
some degree their limited fiscal and jurisdictional autonomy. Similarly,
innovative local mayors who found sustainable new sources of revenue
would be better equipped to contest their subordinate institutional
status than mayors who lacked such creativity and, of course, fiscal
resources.

As a corollary to Lemieux's account, then, we propose
municipal political leadership as a critical intervening variable in the
study of central/local intergovernmental relations. With respect to
post-restructuring London and Toronto, the contrast between a
rhetorically gifted, fiscally creative and progressive leader in one
location (Livingstone) and a relatively inarticulate, fiscally
unimaginative and conservative mayor in the other (Lastman) could hardly
have been more stark. Ken Livingstone had a long and reasonably
successful history of promoting powerful counter-discourses to those of
the British central government, dating back to his sustained opposition
to Thatcherism during the 1980s. By the mid-1990s, Livingstone had
developed a distinct but equally compelling challenge to Tony
Blair's New Labour directions, and was prepared to experiment with
creative revenue ideas including congestion charging in central London.
(9) In comparison, Mel Lastman tended to echo the efficiency rhetoric of
the Ontario Conservatives, and promised as mayor to freeze Toronto
property tax rates. To the extent that Lastman sought additional
revenues for Toronto, these were largely expanded versions of existing
provincial grants and loans as well as user-pay schemes that did little
to alter the city's precarious fiscal and political status. (10)

Cross-Case Similarities

Since the late 1990s, Toronto and London have confronted a series
of significant and, in many respects, parallel challenges, despite the
differing ideological orientations of their Ontario Conservative and
British New Labour central governments. Although they varied with
respect to such factors as date of first settlement and population size,
both the greater Toronto and London urban regions stood out as crucial
economic and cultural centres in an increasingly competitive,
globalizing international context. Both cities grew rapidly, to the
point that each held about 15 percent of the respective country's
total population. Toronto and London were also identifiable immigration
magnets, attracting remarkably high proportions (approximately half) of
diverse newcomers to Canada and Britain, respectively. (11)

In the face of these patterns, central government elites in Ontario
and Britain pursued various strategies that would ostensibly advance the
competitive edge of their capital cities. At the level of institutional
design, both cities underwent major governance transitions that sought
to re-shape them in a manner desired by their political masters. Ontario
Conservative as well as British New Labour interests sought to contain
what they viewed as an inherent tendency toward local government
wastefulness and self-aggrandizement. In Toronto, municipal amalgamation
was presented as an efficient, streamlined scheme to improve the
coordination of local decision-making and eliminate expensive overlap
and duplication. GLA creation was championed as a way to modernize and
revitalize local government, reversing what Tony Blair referred to as
"a dangerous loss of civic pride" and a declining quality of
life in Britain's capital city. (12)

In both contexts, senior levels of government rejected claims for
dramatically widened local fiscal and political autonomy. The rapid
demographic growth fuelled largely by international immigration to
Toronto and London in this period, therefore, did not result in a
commensurate increase in taxation powers or jurisdictional authority
under the terms of governance reforms. Instead, as detailed below,
Toronto's fiscal resources stagnated or declined, at the same time
as provincial controls tightened in crucial areas. (13) Although New
Labour's decision to cede strategic authority over transportation,
economic development and public safety to a new London municipal unit
was significant, the GLA had limited influence in these sectors due to
narrow taxation powers, the continued constitutional dominance of the
central government, and the strong interest of London's local
boroughs in defending their policy roles. (14)

One additional commonality involved the effort invested by central
government elites in recruiting sympathetic and compliant mayors in
major cities. At the helm of an amalgamated Toronto, Ontario
Conservatives believed, Mel Lastman would be able not only to freeze
property tax rates, create efficiencies of scale, and take on additional
redistributive policy responsibilities with limited funds, but also he
could shield the provincial Tories from any negative fallout from their
various decisions. Lastman's leadership eventually imploded in such
a way as to cause maximum damage to his senior government allies. To the
dismay of his Queen's Park supporters, the mayor condemned
amalgamation, the results of the "who does what" policy
reorganization process, and the Harris government while still holding
some semblance of public respect. Once Lastman's public legitimacy
had severely eroded, the provincial government was left without a
reliable mayoral ally in Canada's largest city, and risked sharing
at least some of his discredited reputation. (15)

New Labour seemed to assume a friendly party modernizer of the
Blairite persuasion would fill the "strong mayor" position in
London. The varied maneuvers that saw Frank Dobson emerge as the
official party candidate, only to lose badly in the spring 2000 mayoral
elections, undermined claims that the new central government was
genuinely committed to renewing democracy in Britain's largest
city. The fact that Ken Livingstone was elevated to the status of
populist hero twice, first by Margaret Thatcher, and then by Tony Blair
in what was portrayed as a "stitched-up" Labour party
selection process, meant he threatened to become an even stronger
"strong mayor" than New Labour had intended. (16) In place of
the damaged insider mayor who confronted Ontario Conservatives from
Toronto city hall, New Labourites faced a crusading outsider mayor in
London--one whose potential to challenge a control-obsessed central
government loomed large.

Amalgamation in Toronto

At first glance, Ontario Conservative efforts to create a single
amalgamated municipal government in Toronto seemed surprising. How could
Premier Mike Harris, an outspoken foe of what he viewed as big
government, champion not just the elimination of the six units that
comprised Metropolitan Toronto, but also their forced merger into an
unwieldy, amalgamated "megacity"? (17) Once accomplished, how
would the discursive, financial and institutional terms of amalgamation
shape policy outcomes in Toronto? Did voters elect a mayor who would
contest these new circumstances?

Much of the rationale for urban government changes during the
Harris years can be gleaned from Lemieux's account of Reagan- and
Thatcher-era precedents. Leading Ontario Tories after 1995 valued
efficiency and cost-cutting norms that called for "less government
... fewer politicians ... less bureaucracy ... less overlap and
duplication." (18) Consistent with claims by previous Liberal and
NDP governments that existing municipal government arrangements were not
working well, the Conservatives imposed a single unit on the downtown
City of Toronto and a surrounding ring of five established inner
suburbs. (19) Bringing the approximately 2.2 million residents of
Metropolitan Toronto into a single structure contrasted with the more
geographically expansive recommendation of an NDP-appointed task force,
chaired by Anne Golden, to create a regional government unit that would
cover the Greater Toronto area, thus reaching a combined population of
about 4 million. (20)

The rapidly expanding outer suburbs of Toronto proved to be
fruitful political space for Mike Harris' 1995 campaign platform.
Known as the Common Sense Revolution (CSR), the Tory manifesto promised
to balance the provincial budget, lower personal income tax rates by 30
percent, and freeze municipal property tax rates. Ontario voters were
told the Tories would "spend more efficiently" because Mike
Harris would, in his own words, trim "a lot of fat, a lot of
waste." (21)

Parallel with Margaret Thatcher's motivations in shutting down
the Greater London Council, the Harris Conservatives believed they would
gain politically by eliminating the downtown unit known as the City of
Toronto. (22) Under the leadership of Mayor Barbara Hall (whose previous
positions included family lawyer, social housing advocate and NDP
councillor from the Cabbagetown neighbourhood) and several of her
predecessors, the City of Toronto built a reputation as a progressive
municipality where equity initiatives, low-income housing, child care
programmes and responsible commercial development were viewed as key
priorities. (23)

According to progressive critics, the Harris agenda promised to
focus on "rationalization, privatization, marketization and
centralization." (24) After 1995, Hall along with other centre and
centre-left members of Toronto city council became vocal opponents of
provincial efforts to cut funding for large cities, and to eliminate
rent controls, local control over education taxes, smaller downtown
hospitals (notably Women's College Hospital), community school
boards and a raft of other elements they saw as integral to life in the
inner city. The high-profile Days of Protest campaign against the Harris
government brought together diverse activists including
anti-amalgamation interests who organized under the banners of Citizens
for Local Democracy (C4LD) as well as the more immigrant-based New
Voices for the New City. (25) Proponents of the Common Sense approach
continued to condemn what they viewed as the "political and
administrative extravagances" of downtown politicians and their
allies. (26)

By early 1997, the Harris government apparently reached a point
analogous to the one Thatcher arrived at in 1986. Just as the British
prime minister refused to participate in a series of
Livingstone-inspired by-elections that might have been construed as a
referendum on the future of the GLC, so too the Ontario Conservatives
ignored a 76 percent Metro Toronto referendum vote against amalgamation
in March 1997. (27) They also rejected the Golden Task Force
recommendation of a greater Toronto area structure that would integrate
the older downtown, established suburban and newer suburban areas--in
large part because it risked alienating crucial Conservative interests
in the outer-ring suburbs, and would ostensibly create a mini-province
of Toronto. (28) Leading provincial Tories threw their support behind
suburban North York mayor Mel Lastman, a home appliance tycoon who was
assertively pro-business and promunicipal tax freeze, in his campaign
against Barbara Hall for the mayoralty in the enlarged Toronto.

Lastman defeated Hall in the first amalgamated mayoral election in
November 1997. During the same period, Ontario municipal affairs
minister Al Leach followed through on his promise to cut the number of
Toronto city council seats and school board posts; in Leach's
words, the overarching aim of "cleaning up" the municipal
"mess" was to "save money, remove barriers to growth and
investment, and help create jobs." (29) Despite concerted
opposition efforts to mobilize public and media opinion against
amalgamation, and despite a court challenge contesting the actions of
the Harris government, the scheme went ahead. (30) The judge who turned
down the constitutional challenge confirmed that the Canadian
constitution awards exclusive control over municipal institutions to
provincial governments.

Overall, the discursive framing of amalgamation by Harris
government elites was clearly unfavourable to proponents of local
democracy and urban diversity. Ontario Conservative talk about ensuring
efficiency and competitiveness, and of eliminating waste, duplication
and extravagance in downtown Toronto in particular, tended to push aside
other normative discourses including those promoting responsive
municipal government, enhanced citizen representation and social justice
issues.

In fiscal terms, Ontario Conservative politicians maintained it was
possible to freeze urban property tax rates and significantly lower
provincial income tax rates without imposing major expenditure cuts. By
way of contrast, opponents claimed the upshot of provincial financial
decisions, including the results of the "who does what"
exercise accompanying amalgamation, would be punitive and anti-urban,
designed to press additional costly and largely redistributive social
spending onto municipal governments. According to critics, the services
realignment or disentanglement scheme emanating from Queen's Park
was not revenue neutral from an inner Toronto perspective, since it
entailed major reductions in social spending in areas where provincial
and municipal governments had shared funding and delivery
responsibilities, and necessitated sharp increases in residential
property taxes in older downtown neighbourhoods, administered under the
guise of "actual value assessment." (31) Parallel with the
downloading model pioneered by Ronald Reagan in the US, the Harris
approach moved responsibility for child care, social housing and public
transit onto the shoulders of municipal governments (32) while
centralizing control over areas of middle-class priority, including
elementary and secondary school education. (33)

At the level of institutional consequences, the provincial
restructuring of health care, education and housing that accompanied
amalgamation in Toronto seemed to hold particularly disastrous
consequences for residents of the inner core. If the Tory promise to cut
excess capacity in downtown hospitals was such a good idea, then why
were ambulances unable to deliver emergency patients to rooms, beds or
even stretchers in corridors? (34) If all public school boards in
Ontario faced the same rigid provincial funding formula, then who would
compensate for the fact that the Toronto urban area remained the
destination of nearly half of all immigrants to Canada? (35) If rent
controls were vastly weakened because they ostensibly discouraged
private sector investment, then how long would it take to find a
laissez-faire solution to growing urban homelessness and underhousing?
(36) For many Toronto residents, particularly in the urban core,
palpable evidence of decay and decline in health care, education,
housing, transit and other areas began to undermine provincial Tory
claims about efficiency, fiscal responsibility and the need to
restructure both intergovernmental relations and urban public policy.

Prospects were dim that local leadership in Toronto could challenge
Harris government directions. Mel Lastman initially imposed a municipal
tax freeze and led a reasonably effective new city council, (37) but
eventually changed sides in the debate over amalgamation--to the point
that he portrayed it as "a disaster"--and seemed increasingly
erratic in his behaviour as mayor. (38) Lastman's credibility
either as a Tory ally or critic shrank further once media outlets and
judicial enquiries began to probe a series of questionable spending
decisions by his administration. (39)

By the mid-point of their second term in office, the Ontario
Conservatives faced a far more potent political challenge. The
popularity of the party and of Mike Harris as its leader weakened
dramatically over time, especially among women voters. (40) An official
report by the provincial auditor confirmed that the "who does
what" exercise had indeed punished Ontario's largest city.
(41) As doubts deepened regarding the Tories' ability to retain any
of the already few downtown constituencies that they held in Toronto and
other Ontario cities, Harris announced his retirement.

In March 2002, Ontario Conservatives elected former provincial
finance minister Ernie Eves as their new leader and premier. Eves
initially promoted a more consultative, less polarizing approach to
governing, one that promised to soften some of the sharp ideological
edges of the Common Sense Revolution. Over time, however, Eves drifted
toward more harsh right-wing positions, and led his party to defeat in
the October 2003 provincial elections. (42)

In short, the circumstances in which amalgamation unfolded in
Toronto were overwhelmingly unfavourable to the emergence of progressive
urban policies. After 1995, Canada's largest city faced a senior
level of government that was determined to advance norms of efficiency,
low taxes and cost-cutting; pursue the off-loading of redistributive
policies to municipalities without providing them with adequate fiscal
resources; and enforce an institutional redesign that vastly diluted the
influence of competing political interests. Once they elected a mayor
who was sympathetic to the provincial government agenda, Toronto voters
ensured that the mandate of the largest single constituency in Canada
would not be used to contest the Ontario Tories' discursive, fiscal
or institutional directions. Even though Mel Lastman later condemned
amalgamation, he was unable to mount a forceful or credible challenge to
his Queen's Park masters.

Creating the Greater London Authority

Decisions by the New Labour government of Prime Minister Tony Blair
to create a small, narrowly streamlined London government with limited
policy authority seemed perplexing on first inspection. Why would Blair,
a consistent critic of what he saw as the undemocratic, centralizing
practices of his Conservative predecessors, create what some observers
described as a "heavily circumscribed" new London unit with an
executive mayor and "toothless" assembly? (43) What
discursive, fiscal and institutional circumstances faced the new
strategic authority for London? Were they likely to be challenged by the
city's first popularly elected mayor?

GLA creation followed from a particular set of normative
considerations. The 1997 Labour party manifesto stressed the need to
improve the "economy, effectiveness and accountability" of
local government. (44) At one level, this meant New Labour endorsed a
decentralist agenda that would enhance local democracy by creating
elected bodies in Scotland, Wales and London, and thus remove some
authority from central government agencies that controlled those areas
through the Thatcher/Major era. On another plane, New Labour elites
wanted to avoid a repetition of what they saw as the bloated, expensive,
inefficient and "loony left" ways of the Thatcher-era GLC.
Somewhere between Ken Livingstone's old left flagship, on one side,
and the absence of any overarching elected body for Greater London after
1986, on the other, Tony Blair proposed a scheme that was more
responsive than no pan-London government, but significantly less
autonomous than the old GLC. (45)

Mindful of these considerations, New Labour proposed a plan that
retained 32 existing local boroughs and their councils (as well as the
financial district's Corporation of the City of London) and
introduced an executive mayor, to be elected at large by voters, and a
weaker Greater London Assembly, whose 25 members would hold oversight
and supervisory responsibilities. Taken together, the mayor and assembly
would constitute the Greater London Authority, described as "an
overall coordinating body" charged with looking after the economic
development, transportation and public safety (police and fire)
responsibilities for inner and outer London's approximately five
million residents. (46)

New Labour's discourse about the need to circumscribe local
autonomy in order to prevent a return to wastefulness and inefficiency
was mirrored in its fiscal decisions after 1997. Despite efforts by
urban interests to remove control over business property tax rates from
the central government, the National Domestic Rate established by the
Conservatives remained in place. As a result, local governments
continued to rely on the central government for up to 85 percent of
their operating funds. (47) Under New Labour, Westminster also retained
the power to limit or cap spending by city councils.

In addition, Blair's government imposed selective, highly
detailed and heavily "prescriptive" fiscal criteria, including
so-called Best Value performance indicators, on municipalities. (48) The
Best Value scheme represented a slightly modified version of the
Tories' Compulsory Competitive Tendering and Private Finance
initiatives, under which efficiency and privatization values were
paramount. (49) According to critics, New Labour's intentions
vis-a-vis local authorities were to monitor them closely, offer
incentives to those that complied with central government demands, and
threaten to penalize those that failed to comply--in each case by
imposing market-based values that emphasized efficiency and low cost at
the expense of social equity, citizen representation or social justice
considerations. (50)

As an institutional arrangement, the GLA design clearly opened up
important opportunities for public engagement and local democracy. In
simple terms, Londoners won a chance beginning in 2000 to elect their
own mayor, using a supplementary vote scheme that asked them to select
both first and second choice candidates. (51) Yet the darker side of
central government machinations--notably, efforts to deny the Labour
nomination to Ken Livingstone and, later on, to ensure that he did not
run or win as an independent candidate--revealed Westminster's
overriding interest in controlling London's new mayor. In the end,
the Blairites' unwavering hostility toward Livingstone seemed to
backfire. "Red Ken" narrowly lost the party nomination to
cabinet insider Frank Dobson, but triumphed as an independent candidate
in the May 2000 mayoral race. (52)

Compared with the myriad central government agencies that dominated
urban policy-making in such sectors as transportation or economic
development after 1986, the more transparent structures set in place
under the GLA scheme also signaled some improvement. For example, the
creation of Transport for London as an executive body controlled by the
mayor meant strategic responsibility for subways, buses, taxis and major
roads rested as of 2000 in the hands of a locally elected politician.
(53)

What distinguished Ken Livingstone from his Labour competitors
including Frank Dobson, and from Mel Lastman in Toronto, was a firm
willingness to push back early and often against central government
elites. As a Labour left veteran, Livingstone insisted on public
ownership and no privatization of the London Underground, and imposed a
congestion tax on private vehicles entering London, knowing he would
face concerted opposition from New Labour and others for his positions.
Livingstone lost a high court challenge to prevent subway privatization,
but secured support for a congestion charge that went into effect in
February 2003 and was expected to raise more than 68 million [pounds
sterling] net during its first year of operation. (54) In his mayoral
vision statement for the 2002 official plan, Livingstone went
considerably beyond New Labour rhetoric about inclusion and
accountability, to argue that London needed to plan its future around
the norms of equality of opportunity and environmental sustainability,
in addition to economic growth. (55)

Livingstone's actions effectively resonated with broader
criticisms of central government positions, and pushed New Labour to
breathe air into Blairite talk about local democracy. Although he had
his share of detractors, Livingstone managed to present himself as a
crusading local democrat, one who was unafraid to take on the
overbearing, control-obsessed denizens of New Labour. As part of his
alternative approach, Livingstone initiated a series of twice-yearly
open forums (known as People's Question Time) in which Londoners
could meet and question their mayor.

Conclusions

In comparative terms, the discursive circumstances facing the new
GLA arrangement were more promising from a progressive policy
perspective than those that that confronted post-amalgamation Toronto.
Tony Blair's New Labour central government was enamoured of
efficiency and competitiveness criteria, but also endorsed greater
responsiveness and decentralized decision-making, along with enhanced
social cohesion, in the wake of the Thatcher/Major years. Blairite
rhetoric thus offered important openings for progressives like Ken
Livingstone, who sought greater local control and who viewed norms of
social equality and representation as paramount.

Once New Labour created a strategic authority in London with narrow
fiscal and jurisdictional limits, Ken Livingstone used his mandate as
the city's first popularly elected mayor to push against these
constraints, and to challenge Tony Blair's talk of local democratic
renewal. Since New Labour discourse offered more progressive openings
than did the rhetoric of the Ontario Conservatives, and since Ken
Livingstone worked to exploit those opportunities using his base in
Britain's most populous constituency, the early GLA years seemed
considerably more promising from a progressive policy perspective than
the initial amalgamation period in Toronto.

Neither the Toronto nor London scenario, however, represented a
talk, money or design nirvana. What distinguished these two cases was
the more progressive orientation of British New Labour than Ontario
Conservative senior governments, combined with the greater likelihood
that an effective municipal leader would challenge central government
discursive, fiscal and institutional directions in London than Toronto.
As a more creative, interventionist and credible mayor, Ken Livingstone
pushed back against central government norms that elevated private
sector, pro-efficiency values, and claimed he was infusing the local
democracy ideas of New Labour elites with real-world content. As well,
Livingstone made a compelling public case for enhanced fiscal resources,
and used his limited authority base to win the high-profile battle over
congestion charging in central London.

By way of contrast, Toronto's municipal leadership in 1998 and
following failed to mount a compelling challenge to the provincial
Conservatives. As the first megacity mayor, Mel Lastman initially
carried out a promise to freeze property tax rates and thus tie the
hands of downtown spendthrifts, all in the name of eliminating waste and
duplication. Once Toronto became burdened with greater responsibilities
for expensive redistributive programs, in the absence of commensurate
fiscal resources or institutional autonomy, Lastman began to oppose
Queen's Park, but lacked credibility by this point. Central
government elites who had imposed amalgamation in the first place
refused to compromise in discursive, fiscal or institutional terms,
while the weakened Toronto mayor demonstrated limited capacity to push
back at any level.

When applied to contemporary developments in Toronto and London,
Vincent Lemieux's conceptual framework casts a spotlight on
local/central government relations, and particularly the preferences and
intentions of senior levels of government. Efforts undertaken by the
latter, particularly in Ontario after 1995, to impose market-oriented
efficiency norms as part of a larger reconfiguration of urban
government, were assisted by their discursive power and by their control
of municipal finances. Campaigns by the central government at
Queen's Park to alter public norms and rhetoric held important
consequences. For example, they tended to obscure the fundamental
citizenship work performed by progressive municipalities, by ignoring
underlying values about citizen engagement, social equality and the role
of local governments in teaching democratic practice at the community
level.

Although New Labour's rhetoric about reforming municipal
governance in London was grounded in norms of local democracy and
renewal, the actual practice of nominating an official mayoral candidate
and ceding control to the GLA revealed profound reluctance and, indeed,
contradictions on this score. As the major immigrant-receiving magnets
in Canada and Britain, respectively, Toronto and London were cities
where local/central government relations and the quality of urban
democracy constituted far more than simply academic categories of
analysis, since the language and actions of both tiers of power could
shape the socialization experiences of a large generation of new
citizens.

Lemieux's approach also reveals a critical link between
discourses about cities, on one side, and urban institutional
capacities, on the other. Local democrats in Toronto and London promoted
a vision of urban autonomy that was predicated on an infusion of
financial resources as well as authority by central governments.
Progressives in both cities obviously needed additional resources to
provide better public transportation, child care programs, housing and
so on. What they also required, as Lemieux's thesis suggests, was
greater control over the casting, creation and delivery of these
schemes, because central governments could impose competing normative
overlays that privileged markets, efficiencies and streamlining at the
expense of citizen access, equity and voice. Without meaningful
authority in the discursive, fiscal as well as design realms, cities
were thus condemned to at best very partial progressive futures.

This assessment of contemporary talk, money and design scenarios
demonstrates the important role played by local leadership in making
progressive policy action in immediate post-amalgamation Toronto more
difficult than in the early GLA period. For empirical analysts, the
opportunity to probe this comparison further by tracing longitudinal
policy outcomes in two cities where governance transitions occurred
almost simultaneously, seems too rich to pass up.

Scholars frequently conclude that additional research is needed in
a given area of enquiry. In this case, future accounts provide the only
chance we have to learn whether progressive policy outcomes were indeed
more numerous and meaningful in post-2000 London than post-amalgamation
Toronto. In particular, further study is necessary to assess whether a
change of municipal leadership in Toronto (with the election of David
Miller in November 2003) would alter the talk, money and design contexts
that seemed to constrain progressive action in 1998 and following in
Canada's largest city. Given that Miller's victory followed a
shift in party government from Conservative to Liberal at the provincial
level, new mayoral leadership in Toronto could hold significant and
indeed promising implications.

Acknowledgements

* Research funding for this study was provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am grateful to
Jean Coleno for his assistance, and to Andrew Sancton, Richard Stren,
Tom Urbaniak and the three CJUR assessors for their insightful comments
on an earlier version.

(3) David Siegel, "Urban Finance at the Turn of the Century:
Be Careful What You Wish For," in Edmund P. Fowler and David
Siegel, eds., Urban Policy Issues: Canadian Perspectives (2nd ed.;
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2002), 36.

(4) See Andrew Sancton, "The Municipal Role in the Governance
of Canadian Cities," in Trudi Bunting and Pierre Filion, eds.,
Canadian Cities in Transition (2nd ed.; Toronto: Oxford University
Press, 2000), 440.

(5) See, for example, Caroline Andrew, "Municipal
Restructuring, Urban Services and the Potential for the Creation of
Transformative Political Spaces," 313, 315. See Andrew Sancton,
Merger Mania: The Assault on Local Government (Montreal:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000).

(8) Other comparative accounts of developments in these two cities
include Kennedy Stewart and Patrick Smith, "'Big Tents'
vs. 'Big Sticks:' Regional Governance Reform in Greater London
and Metropolitan Toronto," paper presented at the Policy Research
Initiative conference, Ottawa, 2000; and Kennedy Stewart,
"Explaining Regional Governance Reform Initiatives and Structural
Choice in Greater London and Metropolitan Toronto," paper presented
at the Canadian Political Science Association meetings, Toronto, 2002.
For an account of Toronto versus Los Angeles governance changes that
parallels Lemieux's argument on the 'hollow shells'
represented by centralization and decentralization, see Roger Keil,
"Governance Restructuring in Los Angeles and Toronto: Amalgamation
or Secession?" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
24:4 (December 2000), 758-80.

(11) According to Anisef and Lanphier, "the Toronto metropolis
currently attracts almost half of all newcomers to Canada." See
Paul Anisefand Michael Lanphier, "Introduction: Immigration and the
Accommodation of Diversity," in Anisef and Lanphier, eds., The
World in a City (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 3.
According to Buck et al., London during the 1990s "absorbed about
55 per cent of the national inflow" of immigrants. See Nick Buck,
Ian Gordon, Peter Hall, Michael Harloe and Mark Kleinman, Working
Capital: Life and Labour in Contemporary London (London: Routledge,
2002), 141.

(12) Tony Blair, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (London:
Fourth Estate, 1996), 314.

(13) For an overview of this situation, see Sanction, Merger Mania,
125-36; and Enid Slack, "Have Fiscal Issues Put Urban Affairs Back
on the Policy Agenda?" in Caroline Andrew, Katherine A. Graham and
Susan D. Phillips, eds., Urban Affairs: Back on the Policy Agenda
(Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002), 309-28.

(14) See Travers, "Local Government."

(15) On Lastman's changing views, see James Rusk,
"Lastman Sours on Amalgamation," Globe and Mail (9 January
2001), A17; and John Barber, "Lastman Sends a Warning to
Queen's Park," Globe and Mail (9 January 2001), A17.

(16) "The London Stitch-Up" is the title of chapter 8 in
Liz Davies, Through the Looking Glass: A Dissenter Inside New Labour
(London: Verso, 2001). Journalists' accounts of the London mayoral
race and the evolution of the "strong mayor" idea include Mark
D'Arcy and Rory MacLean, Nightmare! The Race to Become
London's Mayor (London: Politico's, 2000); and Andrew
Rawnsley, Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour
(London: Penguin, 2001,), chap. 18.

(17) The term megacity was employed primarily by critics of
amalgamation, to suggest that the large size of the new unit
contradicted citizen concerns about retaining smaller-scale, ostensibly
more responsive local government units.

(18) Municipal Affairs minister Al Leach, as quoted in Andrew
Sancton, "Amalgamations, Service Realignment, and Property Taxes:
Did the Harris Government Have a Plan for Ontario's
Municipalities?" paper presented at Governing Ontario Conference,
University of Western Ontario, 1998, 9.

(19) On widespread frustration with the status quo in Toronto, see
Andrew Sancton, "Signs of Life? The Transformation of Two-tier
Metropolitan Government," in Andrew et al., eds., Urban Affairs,
189.

(20) Toronto's outer suburbs were already organized into the
four regional municipalities of York, Durham, Peel and Halton. The
Golden Task Force recommended a single, indirectly elected, upper-tier
regional government that would focus on economic development and
infrastructure priorities. See Graham Todd, "Megacity:
Globalization and Governance in Toronto," Studies in Political
Economy 56 (Summer 1998), 200; and Sancton, "The Municipal Role in
the Governance of Canadian Cities," 439-40.

(21) R. D. Gidney, From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of
Ontario's Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999),
235,244.

(23) Progressive mayors of Toronto prior to Hall's tenure
included David Crombie and John Sewell. Their records contrasted with
those of more conservative mayors who governed through the early 1990s,
notably Art Eggleton and June Rowlands. See C. Richard Tindal and Susan
Nobes Tindal. Local Government in Canada (5th ed.; Toronto: Nelson,
2000), 321-25.

(25) See Myer Siemiatycki, Tim Rees, Roxana Ng and Khan Rahi,
"Integrating Community Diversity in Toronto: On Whose Terms?"
in Anisef and Lanphier, eds., The World in a City, 437-41.

(26) Sancton, Merger Mania, 162.

(27) On the London by-elections, see Ben Pimlott and Nirmala Rao,
Governing London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 41. On the
Toronto referendum results, which represent an average across the six
units of what had been Metro Toronto, see Julie-Anne Boudreau, The
Megacity Saga: Democracy and Citizenship in this Global Age (Montreal:
Black Rose Books, 2000), 14.

(28) The Golden Task Force recommendation also added rather than
eliminated a layer of government. See Sancton, Merger Mania, 121-22.

(29) Leach as quoted in Boudreau, The Megacity Saga, 8, 6.

(30) See Boudreau, The Megacity Saga; Martin Horak, "The Power
of Local Identity: C4LD and the Anti-Amalgamation Mobilization in
Toronto," University of Toronto, Centre for Urban and Community
Studies, Research Paper 195; and Engin Isin, "Governing Toronto
without Government: Liberalism and Neoliberalism," Studies in
Political Economy 56 (Summer 1998), 179-84. On the failed court
challenge, see Beth Moore Milroy, "Toronto's Legal Challenge
to Amalgamation," in Andrew et al. eds., Urban Affairs, 157-78.

(31) See Boudreau, The Megacity Saga, 28-30; Slack, "Have
Fiscal Issues Put Urban Affairs Back on the Policy Agenda," 314-16;
and Katherine A. Graham and Susan D. Phillips, "Who Does What in
Ontario: The Process of Provincial-Municipal Disentanglement,"
Canadian Public Administration 41:2 (1998), 175-209.

(32) Harris' action contrasted with the recommendations of the
Golden Task Force and "Who Does What" panel that
responsibility for redistributive policies rest in provincial hands. See
Boudreau, 8.

(33) See Gidney, From Hope to Harris, 247-53.

(34) On health care pressures during this period, see Antonia
Maioni, "Health Care in the New Millennium," in Herman Bakvis
and Grace Skogstad, eds., Canadian Federalism (Toronto: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 87-104.

(35) This Toronto area was defined as the census metropolitan area,
or a somewhat smaller zone geographically and demographically than the
total inner city, inner suburban and outer suburban region. See Frances
Frisken, L.S. Bourne, Gunter Gad, and Robert A. Murdie, "Governance
and Social Sustainability: The Toronto Experience," in Mario Polese
and Richard Stren, eds., The Social Sustainability of Cities (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2000), 76; and Anisef and Lanphier,
"Introduction," 3.

(36) See Jack Layton, Homelessness: The Making and Unmaking of a
Crisis (Toronto: Penguin, 2000); and David Cameron,
"Homelessness," in Timothy L. Thomas, ed., The Politics of the
City (Scarborough: Nelson, 1997), 219-28.

(37) On Lastman's early successes as mayor, see Sancton,
Merger Mania, 136-39.

(38) In Lastman's words, "There's no two ways about
it. Amalgamation for Toronto has turned out to be a disaster." See
Rusk, "Lastman Sours on Amalgamation." Lastman's judgment
was called into doubt on numerous occasions, including when he shook
hands publicly with a Hell's Angels biker to welcome him to the
city, and when he confessed worry before leaving on a trip to Africa (to
support the 2008 Toronto Olympics bid) that his hosts on that continent
might boil him alive. See "Mel's Moments," Globe and Mail
(19 September 2002), A26.

(41) In 2001 alone, according to the provincial auditor, Toronto
was shortchanged $140 million. See Murray Campbell, "Tory
Offloading has a Foul Odour Indeed," Globe and Mail (4 July 2002).

(42) In spring 2003, for example, the Ontario Conservatives
announced that they were considering a fixed time limit for receipt of
welfare payments, parallel with initiatives adopted in the United
States, and in British Columbia under Gordon Campbell's Liberals.

(43) Pimlott and Rao, Governing London, 75, 55.

(44) This emphasis appeared in the 1997 Labour party election
manifesto, as quoted in Travers, "Local Government," 119.

(50) For an overview of competing perspectives, see Travers,
"Local Government," 117-38.

(51) See Pimlott and Rao, Governing London, 89. One commentator
argued that new electoral schemes introduced as part of the Greater
London Authority reforms could encourage the "normalisation within
British political culture" of alternatives to single member
plurality arrangements. See Ian Loveland, "The Government of
London," Political Quarterly 70:1 (January-March 1999), 97.

(52) The second place finisher was Conservative candidate Steven
Norris, while Dobson ran third on the first count.

(54) On debates over Tube privatization and congestion charging,
see Pimlott and Rao, Governing London, chap. 7. Congestion charging in
central London went into effect on 17 February 2003, and reduced traffic
delays and accidents during its first six months of operation. For
details on revenues, public approval ratings and traffic impact, see
Transport for London, Congestion Charging: Six Months On,
www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/ cc--intro.shtml

(55) See Greater London Authority, The Draft London Plan: Draft
Spatial Development Strategy for Greater London (London: Greater London
Authority, 2002).

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